Looking for Shiny and New- Boring Old News Need Not Apply

I love turning my computer on in the morning.

The first thing that happens is it makes little chirpy happybird noises. Then the weather comes on screen, followed by the Yahoo start page and the day's top headlines.

You've seen this- on the right is a box with the top 10 things people are typing into their search engines for more information on. For weeks "BP" or "oil spill" or "gulf of mexico" were right in the top 5. Then as the whole deal dragged on and on and on it became very apparent that we as a nation have collective ADD- we can't stay focused on anything for too long if it stays the same- even if it's horrible like non-stop hemorrhaging of oil into the waters of the Gulf.

Because here's the thing.

It hasn't changed. It's still the same (awful)footage of gushing brown/black yack spewing up from the bottom of the dimly-lit ocean floor. Every day makes it more awful, more disastrous, yet because nothing has happened to make it EXCITING for us again, we've become bored and turned away.

'Round about Memorial Day "oil spill" was sandwiched between "gas grills" and "family activities".

Now it's not there at all. It's dropped right off the radar of things most googled and been replaced (as of July 3rd) with (in order, no less)-
Elin Nordegren
Lindsay Lohan
Hugh Laurie
Victoria Beckham
Gas Grills
Carrie Prejean
Dollywood
Designer Sunglasses
Steve Jobs
Family Activities

Apparently what we need is something to remind us it's still there- not enough to, yanno, hurt anyone, but enough to regain our tiny shallow attention spans.

Like a giant fissure opening up from the fractured ocean floor and hoards of glow in the dark purple fanged eels spewing forth, or the tar balls washing up onto the beaches melding together into the spitting images of various saints- SOMETHING that would catch our fancy, tickle our interest get us back to making this front and center again, where it sort of belongs.

On accounta it's gonna affect all of us everywhere for a very long long time.

But we live in a Sound Byte Society and the media knows just how much we can absorb at one time and plays the news accordingly. Because if we get too depressed, too outraged, too despondent, we might, just maybe, turn the news off altogether. And that would make the advertisers very sad.

As an example- the top stories for easy viewing and digestion today are as follows-

"Retail Chains on the Ropes"- a sobering view of the top 10 large stores, some of them like RiteAid or Zales, household brands, that are floundering, perhaps fatally. The economy is so bad that not only the luxury items as sold by Zales, but our daily needs items as sold at the corner drug store, aren't enough to keep these bastions of consumerism afloat.

That's bad.

Next is "Millions of Jobs Lost Forever". *Wow*. What a sobering bummer THAT is. Reminding us that the recent recession(s) have eliminated alot of jobs from the days when Life was Good and everyone deserved not just a chicken in every pot, but a brand new house to cook it in and a brand new SUV to haul it home from the store with.

That's REALLY bad. Wait. Gimme a minute...

The third top story is "Schwarzenegger Slashes Pay", a happy little ditty of government budgets actually making headway at becoming not only less wasteful, but possibly even being able to being balanced- where could this plan possibly go wrong?
It could go wrong by every California state employee going just that much deeper into debt or disappearing for good under the waters of foreclosure and defaults that this pretty substantial cut in pay they're all being faced with will accomplish.

OW. Bad, bad, bad, BAD- MAKE THE SAD SERIOUS SHIT STOP!

Finally- just as we reach our limit of gloom, there she is as the 4th most important story we as Americans need to pay attention to- full page and in all her glory- "Britney Spears' Fashion Blunder".

And Boy Howdy does she deliver. From the inexplicably cleated neon sneakers to the knee high tube sox to the short shorts and tank top that shows (and not in a good way) her "foundation garments" underneath, and in one shining moment all those unpleasant bad economy feelings are vanquished as we take a quick glance at what we ourselves are wearing and being able to conjure up relief, smugness, satisfaction and yea verily even superiority because even if I'm wearing Goodwill flannel jammie pants and my rattiest tie-dyed in high school 35 years ago t-shirt, I'm stylin' finer than Ms. Spears right at this particular moment.

So really. How bad can all that other stuff really be?

News-like website 1
American Consumer 0

Closing the Barn Door After the Cats are Out of the Bag

So the oil keeps belching up from the bottom of the ocean, and there's no shortage of fingers to point and blame to lay.

And everyone is demanding that everyone else DO SOMETHING, FIX IT, STOP IT.

But here's the thing- the thing that's so horrible no one's said it out loud.

Maybe we can't. Maybe no one can. Maybe this is un-fixable un-stoppable un-speakably irreversible.

Because people can do alot of things- we're smart, probably too smart, mostly not sensible enough- people as a whole generally know just enough to be dangerous- and there have been very few times that's as obvious as right now.

Do the oil workers know their jobs? Yes- they're good hard-working men and women doing a difficult task every single day. I don't for a minute think the rig workers could have stopped what happened.

And whoever it turns out to be who did allow/ignore/corner cut this mess into being it doesn't change anything- it'll most likely turn out to be one of those unfortunate chain of events that just sorta blew up on them.

And the Gulf.

And, once the ginormous oil amoeba hits the Gulf Stream- the entire planet.

So what we (and by "we" I of course mean...We- everyone on this little blue and green marble called Earth) may be looking at has not so much to do with "Whose fault is it", or "Whose job is it to fix it", but

"What the hell do we do NOW?"

I dunno.

But I think that while we (and by "we" I of course mean BP and our government and pretty much any other government and all their scientists and geologists and smart people) continue to try to find a way to LESSEN the damage and the waste and general decimation of the thing,

our main consciousness, front and center of all our brains, should be that THIS is our new reality. THIS is our new Gulf, and THIS is something we'll have to live around, live with, and live hopefully in spite of.

Because even though people were smart enough and had clever enough tools to drill the well, run the rig and provide the oil barring any accident or Act of Nature, when faced with what we've got now, we're clearly still Puny Humans and it can't be made better.

Will the ocean heal itself? Will Mother Earth rebound yet again? Golly I hope so.

But I suspect it'll happen (or not) despite whatever humans do, not because of.

Let the Spin Begin

So, there's this oil spill, see?

Not a little one- like the iridescent amoebas floating in puddles under parked cars-but one of truly epic proportions and with no end or edges in sight.


This one is a horror all around- men have lost their lives because of it, their families changed forever by the deaths. Men and women are getting sick because of it, working tirelessly to assist in what can't even be described as a "clean up" because cleaning up is something that's done after a fact, and this is still firmly in the middle of "during", and can't even be described as "containment" because something this huge, this transient-yet-suffocating cannot be boxed, vacuumed, skimmed or dissolved.

Whole communities that depend on the Gulf for a livelihood are facing a very long haul before they can fish there again, though people who live on the ocean face disaster every season from hurricanes, from Acts of Nature- literally farming the waters is as tenuous as farming the land, and as harsh.

And there is one more industry that depends on the Gulf waters and beaches for its income- the tourist trade.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise last night when a tourism spokesperson for The Sunshine State came smiling on TV for his interview- assuring people that Florida's Gulf Coast was still a prime vacation choice- that unlike those nasty stinky gooey blackened beaches of Louisiana, the waters of Florida are still clear, the beaches still pure- only a "shimmer" of oil on the surface.

Really.

No shit.

He said "shimmer" with a straight face- encouraging families to come frolic in the waters-turned-liquid-rainbows because of the shimmery magic of petroleum.

You know- like the surface of your bathtub shimmers when you add that scented Calgon Bath Oil.

So I tried twisting my brain into Tourism configuration...

"Hey, ladies! Yanno how swimming in the ocean is so DRYING to your skin? Come to the Gulf Coast- where our shimmering waters will naturally moisturize your skin while you enjoy our salty surf- like a day at the spa".

"Hey, Kids! Yanno how your parents are always ruining your fun and not letting you swim when all those poison jellyfish come ashore? Not THIS year!"

"Hey, Dad! Yanno how your favorite vacation pastime is setting shit on fire? Imagine your family's wonderment when you actually set fire to WATER! Top THAT, DisneyWorld!"

That's as far as I got before I threw up a little in my mouth and felt a tiny portion of my soul withering up and blowing away, so I stopped there.

Guess I'm just not cut out for Public Relations...